Grade I Listed: HE Record
In 1147, Eustace founded Alnwick Abbey as a house of Premonstratensian Canons. Their order was a highly centralised one with the mother abbey in Premonstré in northern France and Alnwick’s canons came initially from Newhouse in Lincolnshire.
The Abbey became a major landowner and a source of support for the sick, the old and the poor and it continued in this role until its dissolution in 1535.
The Abbey was purchased by the 2nd Duke in 1800 and it was promptly dismantled down to ground level, apart from the Gatehouse.
Excavations in 1884 led to a full ground plan of the substantial abbey buildings being rediscovered, although techniques of the time were not able to date the various buildings.
Alnwick Abbey Excavation Report of 1884
Click here to view and download report.
See also Saint Thomas’s Fields